


Whole Wide World

by actualbabe



Category: New Girl
Genre: F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Soulmate AU, soulmates by touch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 07:35:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13542717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualbabe/pseuds/actualbabe
Summary: Nick gives up. He was never a very touchy-feely kind of guy, so it’s not too hard to minimize casual contact with people. He wears jeans and stops rolling up the sleeves of his shirts and keeps his hands shoved into his pockets whenever he’s in a crowd. He stops shaking hands, and keeps three feet of bar in between him and everyone he meets. He doesn’t miss it.He doesn’t.It’s all bullshit anyways.---jakeyjohnson asked: Alright so I'm gonna need number 5: the one where you don’t know your soulmate until you touch them





	Whole Wide World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jakeyjohnson](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=jakeyjohnson).



Nick is 23 years old when he meets his soulmate. He’s at the birthday party for one of his old college buddies, equal parts high and drunk when he brushes up against this hot girl with blonde hair that’s cropped short above her shoulders. His elbow accidentally hits her bare back and there’s a spark that catches him off guard and makes him tighten his grip on the nearly empty beer can he’s holding.

“Did you feel that?” he yells, trying to catch her attention over the loud music.

She spins around on her too high heel and looks at Nick in surprise. “Yeah.”

It’s enough to convince him.

They make out in the bathroom for half an hour and then go back to his apartment after they’re kicked out by the guy who actually owns the house. Her name is Caroline, and she’s kinda bossy and the sex isn’t mind blowingly amazing, which just proves Nick’s theory that the whole soulmate thing is overrated.

\---

In hindsight he should’ve seen this coming from a mile away.

Things between them start to fade around the same time Nick quits law school. They argue about how she thinks he gives up on everything too easily and how he doesn’t want to be miserable his entire life. Caroline storms out and sleeps over at her friend’s place while Nick goes right back to the bar and drinks until he can’t feel anything. He leaves her a half dozen drunken voicemails saying he’s sorry and that he loves her. She doesn’t call or text him back.

But they don’t break up. They’re soulmates and he guesses that’s enough to keep two people together. They have make-up sex and the next day Nick works his first official shift at the Griffin while Caroline goes off to her ‘real job’ at a consulting firm. Sure, they’re both kinda unhappy, but it works. They make it work.

\---

Caroline meets her  _actual_  soulmate and she dumps Nick roughly five minutes afterwards. There’s a tense silence as she packs up all of her stuff that’s slowly accumulated at his place.

“Did you ever think it was me?” he asks her.

She clenches her jaw and stuffs a sweater into her bag. “I was drunk.”

Nick nods and crosses his arms over his chest. It’s a half-assed answer, and part of him thinks he deserves a better one. But instead he goes to the kitchen and drinks a beer to kill time until she leaves. Soulmates are just a bunch of cosmic bullshit, just like astronomy. He makes his own destiny, he doesn’t need some dumbass stars or universal force to help him find ‘the one.’

\---

Schmidt loses a ton of weight and kinda turns into an asshole, but Nick still lives with him because he pays most of the rent and his obsessive tidiness means that Nick never has to touch any of their assorted cleaning supplies. Plus living with Schmidt is basically second nature at this point, and Nick’s not really sure what he would do without his constant nagging presence.

For all his douchey posturing and peacocking, Schmidt is painfully transparent. He’s always looking for an opportunity to pull his clothes off around women, desperately trying to find that spark that he still believes exists. He still sleeps with them even when he knows they aren’t his soulmate, but then the next morning he shoos them out the door and doesn’t call back, too busy moving on to the next girl to care about hurt feelings.

Winston’s upfront about it, clear and direct. He greets everyone with a handshake, which is kinda lame way to touch your soulmate for the first time. But it’s straightforward and to-the-point, which Nick can appreciate. It’s cool in a casual and manly kinda way.

Coach was more guarded about it, only initiated contact after he’d gotten in a bit of conversation first and had a feeling that things were likely to work out. He liked dating websites and apps the most, so he could actually chat with girls before having to commit to the whole soulmates thing.

Nick just gives up. He was never a very touchy-feely kind of guy, so it’s not too hard to minimize casual contact with people. He wears jeans and stops rolling up the sleeves of his shirts and keeps his hands shoved into his pockets whenever he’s in a crowd. He stops shaking hands, and keeps three feet of bar in between him and everyone he meets. He doesn’t miss it.

He doesn’t.

It’s all bullshit anyways.

\---

Jessica Day is a primary colored whirlwind of crazy sing-song energy. She grates on Nick’s nerves and he actually looks up the criminal punishment for murder in California when she’s in the middle of her twenty fifth tear-filled rewatch of  _Dirty Dancing_. But then he lets his guard down for approximately twenty minutes and it’s long enough for her to worm her way into his life. He finds himself genuinely caring about her, despite the popsicle sticks and glitter and mountain of tissues and constant singing and tiny polka-dot covered skirts she’s always wearing.

Sure, Jess is a pain in his ass and she really needs to learn the importance of personal space and boundaries, but she’s alright. She has a nice laugh and tells terrible jokes and cares about people so deeply that it’s kinda daunting. Nick catches himself staring at her sometimes, not in a creepy way, just trying to figure her out. How she’s able to be so positive, warm and cheery in a way that’s practically infectious. He never manages to find the answer he’s looking for, but he doesn’t let it go, and it arises from the back of his mind whenever she pokes fun at his facial expressions or bugs him about eating ramen for every meal.

The problem with Jess is that she loves physical contact. She’s always reaching out for a hug or to sling her arm around someone’s waist or to rest her head on their shoulder. It’s easy and carefree and Nick wonders if she’s ever afraid to touch someone for the first time, to take a gamble and leave herself vulnerable to heartbreak. She’s told them about Spencer, and he wonders why she stayed together so long with someone she knew wasn’t  _the one_ that the universe had destined her to be with. But then again, his history with Caroline doesn’t give him any room to judge.

Nick avoids her, just like he avoids everyone. He doesn’t want all that soulmate crap to mess his life up even more than it already has. At first she seems disappointed about it, and she spends about a week trying to ‘accidentally’ bump into him or get him to finally cave into her affections. Jess wears her tiny little dresses with her hair tied up, all that bare skin just waiting to make contact with whoever comes close. She plops down next to him on the couch when he’s trying to focus on the game, jumps up to sit on the kitchen counter when he’s making something to eat, lingers in the bathroom as she brushes her teeth while he’s in the shower.

Eventually he snaps. Nick has one too many beers and Jess keeps inching closer and closer to him, no matter how many times he tugs at the sleeves of his hoodie to cover up his hands. He yells at her to stop pushing him already, and that she needs to figure out how to keep to her goddamn self. There’s tears in her eyes when she storms off to her room, and there’s a sinking feeling in his gut that he can’t stop stewing over during his shift at the bar.

Schmidt must tell her about Caroline or something while he’s gone, because she actually apologizes when he gets back to the loft. He mutters an apology of his own before sulking back to his room. It’s weird for a day or two but then they go back to normal, and Jess respects the bubble of space Nick keeps around himself.

Not that she doesn’t try her best to stretch the limits. She becomes a master of not-quite-touches. Leaning in just close enough so that he knows she’s there, hugging him with her arms hovering just over the fabric of his hoodie like an incredibly awkward floating hula hoop. He slowly lets his guard down, just to see the grin on her face when he bumps his flannel-covered shoulder against hers as they’re walking side by side.

He hates to admit it, but it’s kinda nice.

\---

Nick falls for her.

He’s not really sure when it happens. If he’s being romantic then it was when she smiled at him, sweet and soft with her teeth teasing her lower lip. If he’s being realistic then it was in the photobooth at the wedding, when he was pretty drunk and reeling from the whole thing with Caroline and Jess was actually  _there_  for him, unlike the woman he used to think was his soulmate. Or maybe it was during his cancer scare, when he was sitting on the beach as the sun came up and he’d glanced down at Jess, who was fast asleep with her pink coat clutched around her and her dark eyelashes fanning over her rosy cheeks.

He’s a little scared to say that he fell in love with Jess the moment he first saw her.

But it’s true.

Jess is beautiful and incredible and Nick’s heart stutters in his chest when she just looks at him. She’s gorgeous and sexy and sweet and cares about him so much. It’s terrifying. Because he’s never felt like this with someone before. All those years with Caroline pales in comparison to just twenty minutes with Jess.

He doesn’t touch her though. He’s not sure what he’s more afraid of: her  _not being_  his soulmate or her _being_  his soulmate.

\---

It happens by accident.

Nick isn’t thinking at all when he does it. He’s not sure if he ever would’ve gotten up the courage to do it on purpose.

They’re sitting on the couch, watching some cheesy 80s movie except Nick’s paying more attention to Jess than the screen. She keeps giggling at whatever this one guy says and the tv screen casts a slight glow over her features. Nick traces his eyes over the curves of her face: the dip of her eye socket, the gentle slope of her jaw, the swell of her lower lip.  

“Wait, Jess, hold on.”

She turns to look at him with her brow scrunched up in confusion, but she obliges and keeps her head still as he reaches out towards her face.

His fingertip barely brushes over her cheek and it’s-

It’s impossible to describe.

When he was fourteen Jamie convinced him to go on this carnival ride where it lifted you way up in the air and then suddenly dropped you without any warning. Nick had been terrified the whole time, and he’d felt his heart stop and stomach lurch when the attendant finally hit the switch that sent them plummeting towards the ground. The wind had whipped through his hair and for the longest twenty seven seconds of his life he’d gone weightless and lifted three inches off his seat. It was horrifying and exhilarating all at once. He’d stumbled off the ride with his legs wobbly and the sound of his blood rushing in his ears, split between wanting to run away or ride it again.

Touching his soulmate is kinda like that.

Except a thousand times stronger.

“You had an eyelash,” Nick whispers, his heart racing and breath caught up in his chest.

Jess’ lips are slightly parted, bright red and incredibly tempting. She blinks, her eyes open wide as they stare at him in shock. “I’d hoped it was you,” she whispers.

“Me too,” he confesses.

Her eyes are big and blue like the ocean and Nick thinks that he might be drowning. He cups her jaw with his hand and it sets his whole body on fire, and by the way she gasps he can guess that the feeling is mutual. His lips meet hers and it’s so intense that for a moment Nick thinks he’s dying, and  _goddamn_  what a way to go.

It punches the wind right out of him, makes his blood boil and sends a bolt of lighting down his spine. Jess’ hands are trembling as she yanks him down by the collar of his shirt, and Nick tumbles after her, trying to commit every part of this moment to his memory. She tastes like something sweet and he can feel her smiling against his lips as he presses her back against the couch cushions.

Nick kisses her over and over again, until his jaw aches and his chest is heaving. He reluctantly pulls away from her lips to catch his breath. The electric sensation of his forehead pressed against hers makes his head spin. All of his thoughts are clouded by her, hyper fixated on every point of contact between them

“Take me to bed,” Jess says breathlessly.

He doesn’t need her to ask twice.

\---

“Honey,” Nick groans, yanking at the unnecessarily complicated series of hooks and zippers on the back of her dress. “Take this off.”

Jess giggles, and he smiles down at her as she fumbles at the nape of her neck. His hands slide up under the skirt to caress the soft skin of her thighs, a trail of goosebumps appearing where his hands once were. Midway through pulling her dress off it gets caught up around her head, trapping her arms up in the air, and they both dissolve into laughter while they get her unstuck.

And then her dress is on the floor of his room and they’re both in just their underwear. Nick stares at her in awe for a few seconds, his hands hovering just above her ribcage as he takes in the sight of her lying in his bed with her hair spread out on his pillow. Jess shifts to prop her weight up on her elbows, her eyes lidded as she smiles at him.

“Hey,” she says, her voice hushed.

Nick shifts his gaze to her face and returns her smile. “Hey.”

Jess leans in to kiss him, her eyes fluttering shut. She stops just short of his lips and whispers against them, “Touch me.”

Every place where their bare skin meets sends waves of white-hot fire radiating through him. Nick presses himself closer, holds her tighter, runs his hands and mouth over any place he can reach, exploring every inch of tantalizing bare skin as Jess gasps and moans his name into his ear.

He finally pushes inside her and it’s so intense that he has to take a moment to catch his breath. Nick presses his face against her neck, his whole body connected to her in a way that’s nearly too much for him to handle with the way it sets every one of his nerves on fire.

“Yeah,” Jess breathes, her legs wrapped tight around his hips and her hands clenched against his shoulders. “Me too.”

\---

Nick fell in love with Jess the moment she walked through the door, and being in a relationship with her makes him fall for her all over again.

Eventually he gets used to the spark and warmth that radiate through his whole body whenever they touch. But there’s still times when he entwines their fingers together or she kisses him or they make love and that the feeling returns in full force, washing over him until it’s all he can think about.

Jess is incredible. She’s the most amazing person he’s ever met and Nick would do absolutely anything for her. He gets a bank account and actually washes his bedsheets more than once a month. He loves Jess with every ounce of his being, pours his heart into every electrically charged touch and kiss trying to convey just how much she means to him.

She’s the one for him, but he didn’t even need the universe to tell him that. His future is still a terrifying dark abyss, but he’s starting to vaguely think about how Jess is going to be a part of it. He stops in a pawn shop on a whim one day on his way to buy groceries, and there’s a ring that he can imagine perfectly on Jess’ finger. It knocks him back half a paycheck, but it’s worth it for the exhilarating feeling he gets when he walks home with it in his pocket.

Nick feels like he’s on top of the world, and every time he glances over at Jess or feels her skin against his he can’t believe this is actually happening. It’s almost too good to be true. But it’s real, and Jess  _loves_  him. She loves  _him._  It makes his heart soar and his head dizzy and his cheeks ache from smiling because Nick has never been happier than he is now.

\---

It falls apart.

\---

“Jess.” he laughs a little, because he still can’t quite believe that they’re having this conversation. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she says quickly.

Nick smiles at her, his chest swelling the way it does every time he hears those words from her. “More than I’ve ever loved anyone. You’re my  _soulmate._ ”

Her face crumples. “But what if that’s the only thing we have in common?”

A cold shiver runs down Nick’s spine. He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. He just clenches his teeth and tries not to start crying in front of her. Jess rubs at her nose, avoiding meeting his eyes and he can tell she’s also holding back tears. There’s something clawing at his chest because he knows that he’s the one making her hurt like this.

“Are-” He pushes down the lump of guilt that’s stuck in his throat. “Are we?”

Jess nods, biting down hard on her lower lip. Nick stares at the tears pooling in her eyes and clenches his jaw even harder.

He reflexively reaches out to hug her, but then thinks better of it, because he knows that he won’t be able to feel their soulmate connection without falling apart and begging her to reconsider. They stand there awkwardly, limbs dangling at their sides. He walks her back to her room, and she gives him a watery smile before disappearing behind the door.

_Shit._

Nick rubs his hand over his face and shakes his head.  _Shit._

He’s two steps towards his room when he feels the now-familiar spark of Jess’ touch. She tugs on his wrist and his heart soars in his chest. Nick spins around and she pulls him into a hug, her arms wrapped tight around him and her face pressed into his shoulder. He hesitates before letting his hands rest on her back and pulling her into his embrace.

They sway back and forth, and Nick can’t help but drag out the moment. This is it for them. It’s over. He’s not going to be able to have this again with anyone else, this spark, this energy, this chemistry boiling underneath his skin that comes alive whenever she touches him.

Jess pulls away reluctantly and looks up at him, her eyes puffy and red. She’s still holding onto his forearms, her touch almost painfully hot. Nick stares down at her hands, trying to memorize the feeling that he’s never really been able to put into words. He knows that the second she lets go will be the end, that he’ll never be able to touch her again. He doesn’t need to relive the raw sting of this heartbreak over and over.

She drops her hands down to her sides.

Nick’s chest aches.

\---

They keep their distance. Re-establish the bubble that Nick always kept before he knew for sure that Jess was his s-

Things between him and Jess are weird for a while, skirting around each other and purposefully leaving wide gaps of space where they otherwise would’ve been pressed tight together. Nick misses her touch like nothing else, like a part of him has been torn from his chest and he can only sit there and watch while he bleeds out. Then one day he takes all his feelings and shoves them into a box and packs it far away in the pit of his stomach where he can forget he ever had them in the first place.

It takes a while, but they eventually get over the whole awkward exes phase and go back to being friends, politely avoiding talking about how they’re soulmates who were once desperately in love with each other. Nick goes back to dating, and he supposes that it’s nice to be able to sleep with women without having the whole soulmate thing dangling over his head. Jess gets back together with Sam, who has also given up on his soulmate, his best friend from childhood.

Nick touches her again, just once. It’s completely accidental. He comes home late from his double shift at the bar and stumbles towards the kitchen to eat something before passing out. He’s so dead on his feet that he doesn’t notice Jess walking around the corner until it’s too late.

Jess’ hand brushes up against his bare forearm and the feeling is  _so strong._  Nick’s stomach lurches and his mind goes blank, suddenly unable to process anything except the brief feel of her skin against his.

There’s the distant sound of something breaking, and Nick blinks a few times before realizing that Jess’ mug of tea is now lying in shattered remains at their feet. He looks back up at her, and the look on her face is enough to wrench his heart out of his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters.

“It’s fine,” she whispers.

They don’t talk about it.

\---

Reagan doesn’t believe in soulmates.

“It’s all one big hoax,” she muses one night as they lie together in his bed. “We just all convinced ourselves that it was true. I mean, there’s 7.6 billion people on the planet. To think that there’s only one person who’s  _the one_? Even if it  _was_  true, the odds that you would actually find them is just- just unrealistic.”

Nick doesn’t try to disagree with her. He doesn’t want to start a fight. That’s what they do: they don’t fight. It’s how they make things work between them. So he just stares up at his ceiling and stays silent.

Reagan shifts onto her side and props her head up on the palm of her hand. She looks at Nick, something like amusement or pity dancing in her eyes. “You’ve met her, haven’t you?”

He clenches his jaw and avoids her gaze, his chest tight. Jess is across the hall, likely fast asleep. They haven’t touched in nearly two years, except for that one brief moment in the kitchen that he’s nearly convinced was just a dream. For all he knows it could be gone.

“It didn’t work out,” he says tersely.

Reagan doesn’t push the issue. He wonders if she knows.

She probably does.

\---

Things don’t work out with him and Reagan.

Somewhere in the cosmos, fate is laughing at him.

\---

Jess disappears, Reagan moves out, and Nick gets an offer to have his novel published. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions, and all Nick can think about is how Jess won’t answer his calls. He hopes she’s alright. She’s sure that she is. She’s  _Jess._

But still, he worries about her. He’s bouncing his feet nervously on the fancy floor of the publishing agency lobby and checks his phone for the hundredth time. Schmidt pesters him until he finally admits to what’s going on, and then launches into what has to be a pre-prepared speech.

“Nick, you have been in love with this girl from the moment you opened the door and you first laid eyes on her. I have never seen you look at anyone else like that in my entire life,” Schmidt looks at him seriously. “Except maybe, on a few occasions, me.”

Nick’s brow furrows. “I’ve never looked at you the same way I look at Jess.”

“There’s been a few times,” Schmidt insists.

Nick frowns and shakes his head. “There’s never been a time.”

“You looked at Coach maybe once or twice like that. Me, several times. Winston, never. Let’s table it.”

“You’re wrong, ya idiot.” Nick sighs and runs his hand over his face. “The first time I touched Jess I thought that my heart stopped. It was- I can’t even describe it, man. I fell for her harder than I even thought was possible.”

Schmidt looks at him expectantly.

“Don’t give me that,” Nick groans. “It’s not like…” He drops his gaze down to his shoes. “I blew it man.”

“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” Schmidt says hesitantly, and Nick’s head snaps up to look at him. “But Jess isn’t in Portland. She’s here, and she’s packing up her stuff because she’s going to move out of the loft for good.

Nick’s chest goes tight as his brain tries to process what Schmidt’s saying. “Wait, she’s gonna move out of the loft?”

Schmidt sets his hand on Nick’s arm. “For once in your life, don’t be afraid.”

\---

Nick gets back to the loft and Jess’ room is empty. Whatever hope he had left dies out as he looks around the bare room and kicks at a clump of dust with the toe of his shoe. He’s too late. Classic Nick Miller, always fucking up and ruining the things he cares about the most.

_“Can someone let me in the building?”_

He stumbles towards the window, because it feels almost too good to be true. But there’s Jess, banging on the glass doors to the entrance and yelling at the top of her lungs to attract the attention of someone inside the building. Nick’s heart soars and he watches her in disbelief for a moment before calling out, “Jess!”

She cranes her neck up and a smile dawns on her face when she spots him. “Nick!”

_“Stay right there!”_

They somehow manage to miss each other in their attempt to reunite. Nick frantically looks around the street to find where she disappeared to. “Jess! Where’d you go?!”

“Nick!” She calls out the window, and he stares up at her in confusion.

_“Stay right there!”_

He rushes back to get inside the building, so nervous that his hands are shaking as he fumbles to get his key in the lobby door. Nick runs back to the elevator, his heart pounding with adrenaline as he punches the button over and over.

A few agonizingly slow seconds pass, and Nick looks over his shoulder at the entrance to the stairs, trying to figure out the fastest way to get back to Jess. But then the elevator dings, and Nick snaps his head back to watch as the metallic doors slide open. A delivery man wheels out a huge pile of packages, taking his sweet time to exit the elevator and Nick suppresses the urge to shove the guy out of the way.

“Oh, come on, please go faster,” Nick pleads. “I gotta tell my soulmate I’m in love with her.”

The delivery guy razzes him and Nick yells back before turning his attention back to the elevator.

Jess smiles at him. “Hey, Miller.”

_This is it._

“Hey.”

He steps inside, keeping a few inches between them out of habit. The door to the elevator shuts with a soft thud. Nick turns to Jess with every intent to say… well he’s not quite sure what.

Jess throws her arms around his neck and pulls him into a kiss, and the press of her lips against his sets off that flame he’d been sure that he would never feel again. Nick kisses her with every ounce of passion he can scrape together, presses his palms against the sides of her face to feel that white-hot burn of their skin pressed together.

It’s everything he ever wanted.

**Author's Note:**

> check me out on [tumblr!](http://actualbabe.tumblr.com/)


End file.
